Ascension of Larks

by Rachel Linden

  “I know, sweetie.” Maggie planted a kiss on Gabby’s head. “I’m so sorry.” She looked past Gabby to the two boys standing silent and solemn behind their sister. “Hey, guys.”

  They had grown too. Luca, the younger of the two, with Lena’s cheekbones and strong jaw, tawny-haired and olive-skinned, had lost the softness of a child. At six, he was beginning to grow rangy and long-limbed, the first small signs of the man he would become. He was still enough of a little boy to be wearing the T-Rex shirt Maggie had sent him for Christmas, though. He had been obsessed with dinosaurs since before he could talk.

  She turned to Jonah, stockier, husky in build, with the same close-cropped dark hair and deep brown eyes as Marco, though his were somber and watchful, as though they had seen things far beyond his almost nine years. Maggie hugged them both, inhaling the sharp dirt smell of them, kissing the tops of their heads. She knew it was only a matter of time until she wouldn’t be allowed these gestures of affection, until they grew aloof and uncommunicative in the way adolescent boys often did. The golden retriever barked once, nosing in front of the boys, eager for attention too.

  “Hey, Sammy.” Maggie patted his head, scratching behind his silky ears. He was still a youngster, just two years old, a Christmas present for the kids when he was a puppy. He was happiest in the center of the melee. “Have you been a good dog?” she asked rhetorically.

  “He chewed up my new rubber boots that looked like frogs,” Luca informed her, frowning at the dog. “And then he pooped out the plastic eyes.”

  “Nice, Sammy. Keeping it classy.” Maggie grimaced. The dog wagged his tail and grinned. Maggie grabbed her suitcase and camera case from the back of the car and slung her backpack over one shoulder, following the children and Sammy to the house. They ran ahead, rushing through the mudroom door, eagerly calling out her arrival.

  Maggie paused at the screen door for a moment, peering into the mudroom, all at once reluctant to go in. It would be so real then, the space Marco occupied in the house empty, hollowed out with loss. She stared at the tidy row of jackets on hooks, the pairs of play shoes lined up neatly beneath them. Marco’s old leather bomber jacket from college hung on the farthest hook, a pair of his loafers sitting askew beneath it. She squared her shoulders, bracing herself, and opened the door.

  The house was filled with the smells of butter and sugar and rosemary, the unmistakable scent of Lena’s signature sugar cookie recipe. Maggie stepped into the mudroom, suitcase and camera case bumping behind her. “Hello?” she called out cautiously.

  “In the kitchen!” Lena replied.

  Maggie left her luggage in the mudroom and followed the sound of clattering spoons and bowls down the short hallway to the spacious kitchen. There stood Lena, clad in her familiar cherry-print apron, wooden spoon in hand, wisps of blonde hair framing her flushed face. “Maggie!” she exclaimed brightly. “How was your trip?” She ran her finger along the spoon and licked it, pausing contemplatively. “Perfect.”

  Maggie stared at her in consternation. She had expected tears and tomb-like silence, for the house to feel like a grave. It felt instead like she’d stepped into a 1950’s kitchen ad. In essence, it felt exactly like it always felt.

  “What are you making?” she said finally, unsure how to ask what she actually wanted to know. How is this so normal? Why hasn’t time simply stopped?

  Lena looked up, eyes bright. “Sugar cookies for the library bake sale. Want a taste?”

  Maggie studied her for a moment, trying to get her bearings. She noted the faint blue circles of fatigue smudging the delicate skin under Lena’s eyes, the bright smile that went brittle at the edges.

  “Lena.” Maggie stepped forward, arms outstretched, expecting to be enveloped as always in a tight hug that smelled of lemon verbena soap and buttery, baking pastries. But all she got was a quick peck on the cheek, and Lena turned away busily, not making eye contact. And then Maggie understood. Lena wasn’t coping as marvelously well as it appeared, soldiering on, making the best of things. Lena was in complete denial. Maggie hesitated, thrown off-kilter by the realization, unsure what to do.

  “Can I have one?” she asked at last, eyeing the rows of golden cookies lining the newspapers spread out on the counter.

  “Of course.” Lena handed her a slightly misshapen one. “We eat all the ones that aren’t perfect.”

  “I want one too.” Luca poked his head around the kitchen counter that separated the open dining area and family room from the kitchen.

  “Me too, me too,” Gabby chimed in, joining Luca. Lena doled out three slightly elongated cookies, instructing them to give the third one to Jonah, who had disappeared, then shooed them outside to play.

  “Lena.” An older blonde woman appeared in the doorway that led to the seldom-used front section of the house that held a home office, half bath, and formal parlor. “The florist van is in the drive again. Should I get it?”

  “I’ll do it.” Lena ran her hands under cold water and dried them on her apron.

  The woman spied Maggie and started in surprise, putting her hand to her ample bosom. “Well, my lands, I didn’t hear anyone come in.”

  “Maggie, this is my aunt Ellen, Ellen Foster, from St. Paul. She’s my father’s sister,” Lena said by way of introduction. “She’s come to help us since Mother and Daddy aren’t able to travel right now. Mother is still unwell. Aunt Ellen, this is Maggie Henry, our oldest friend. She’s like family.”

  “Welcome, Maggie,” Ellen said warmly, coming into the kitchen and clasping Maggie’s hand in her own. Her hands were strong and calloused, the hands of someone who knew hard work. She looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps Maggie had seen her at Marco and Lena’s wedding among the throng of guests. “We’re glad you made it here in one piece. You’ve come a long way.”

  The doorbell rang, and Lena smiled brightly at Maggie. “One minute,” she called out and disappeared down the hall into the mudroom.

  Ellen released Maggie’s hand and pulled back, giving her a once-over. “How was your trip? Can I get you anything? Water? Are you hungry?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I’m okay, thanks. Just tired. It took longer to get out of Nicaragua than I thought it would. As soon as Lena called, I tried to get back.”

  Ellen nodded. She looked as though she was in her early sixties. Plump in a comforting, grandmotherly sort of way, she was dressed in a pink cardigan, denim skirt, and sensible leather walking shoes. She had the same broad cheekbones and hair Lena had, though her blonde hair was faded with hints of silver, and her eyes were soft and blue. She had a steady calmness about her, the sense that she would not be easily tossed about, that she was rooted to the ground in those sensible shoes.

  “We’re sure glad you’re here now. It’s a hard time for all of them, poor loves.” She paused for a moment to choose a sugar cookie.

  “How’s she doing?” Maggie asked in a half whisper, inclining her head in Lena’s direction.

  “Well . . .” Ellen brushed stray crumbs from her cardigan, catching them in her hand and dumping them into the sink. She pitched her voice low, glancing at the doorway where Lena had gone. “She’s baked five batches of cookies so far today, and the bake sale isn’t until next Friday, if that tells you anything.” She raised her eyebrows and glanced significantly at the rows of cooling cookies.

  “What can we do?” Maggie asked.

  Ellen considered the question. “They say people grieve in all sorts of ways, so I guess it’s just best to let her get on with it in her own way. You never know how people will react to losing a loved one.” She shook her head. “When my sister died, I just about went crazy with the sadness. I couldn’t keep still. I knitted about every second I wasn’t sleeping, just to keep myself sane. That next Christmas everyone we knew got a pair of my mittens, even the mailman. By the time I slowed down, I’d knitted more than thirty pairs. I’ve still got a box of them somewhere.”

  Maggie nodded. “So we just let her do her thing?”


  Ellen nodded. “For the moment I think that’s best.”

  Maggie hesitated, not wanting to ask her next question. “When is the . . . funeral? I forgot to ask.” It felt impossible to say those words and think of them in connection with Marco.

  Ellen got two glasses from the cabinet and filled them both with water from a Brita pitcher, handing one to Maggie and keeping one for herself. “Nothing’s planned yet. Lena wants to have a memorial service after the cremation. I think we’re just waiting on that. Maybe in a few weeks. I think they’ll do something bigger later in New York in the fall, but nothing’s planned for right now. We’re just taking it a day at a time.”

  Lena reappeared in the doorway, holding a giant bouquet of dusky fuchsia lilies interspersed with spikes of greenery. “Look what the Des Moines Library sent!” she exclaimed, carrying the arrangement into the family room and setting it on a side table. “Aren’t they lovely?”

  Only then did Maggie notice the flower arrangements. They were crammed in every spare corner of the family room and dining room areas, covering the coffee table and end tables, the window seat, even overflowing onto an overstuffed armchair. Arrangements of every size, shape, and color, from a tasteful bunch of white narcissus to a gaudy monstrosity involving palm fronds and birds of paradise. There was even one crafted from red roses in a horseshoe shape.

  “Oh wow!” Maggie exclaimed involuntarily, taken aback by the sheer number of them.

  Lena nodded, surveying the room. “Isn’t it wonderful? So many people have been so kind.”

  Maggie stared at her, brow furrowed. Surely Lena must realize these were flowers sent in response to her husband’s death, that they represented loss of the most gripping and fundamental kind. She was acting as though they were some kind of gift, as though they were sent to celebrate a new baby or a birthday.

  “I think we’ve gotten flowers from more than twenty states,” Lena mused, looking at the arrangements. “I should have the children make a list . . .” Absently, she reached out and stroked the petals of a spray of yellow roses, coming back to reality a moment later. “Maggie, you must be exhausted. Do you want to rest before dinner? We’re having salmon.”

  Maggie was at a loss for words. Surely it wasn’t normal to act so normal.

  “Yes,” she said finally, clearing her throat. “That’d be great.”

  Later, seated around the long, oval dining table, they ate a dinner of grilled salmon, green beans, and salad. Through the partially open windows came a cool, damp breeze carrying the briny scent of the sea and the faint rhythmic lapping of the surf on the rocky beach below the house. The boys were quiet except to ask for butter or more milk. Lena seemed preoccupied. Only Gabby was talkative, toying with her food and keeping up a running dialogue between two My Little Ponies she’d brought to the table.

  “Now, Gumdrop, you have to eat your vegetables because they’re good for you,” Gabby admonished one of the ponies, a fat orange one decorated with sparkles.

  “But I don’t want to. I don’t like them,” she whined in a high voice, pushing its nose into her small pile of green beans.

  “Well, you have to or you can’t have a cookie,” Gabby reasoned with it.

  “No, no. You can’t make me.” The pony balked at the vegetables, pink synthetic mane falling into the beans.

  Ellen glanced at Lena, who was staring into space, a fork poised in her hand. Reaching over, Ellen laid a gentle hand on Gabby’s shoulder. “Let’s not play ponies while we’re eating, dear love. You can take them into the bath with you later.”

  Frowning but obedient, Gabby set the ponies by her glass of milk. The rest of dinner passed quietly. No one glanced at the empty place at the table, though Marco’s absence was glaring. Ellen asked Maggie questions about her work and about the trip to Nicaragua, and she replied almost mechanically. It felt surreal, as though they were moving in slow motion through some alternative version of reality.

  “Anyone for a game of Sorry?” Ellen asked as she cleared the table. They played one round. Luca and Gabby teamed up with Ellen and Maggie while Lena and Jonah played on their own. Ellen tried her best to rally enthusiasm for the game, but it was obvious no one really wanted to play. Fighting a crippling fatigue, Maggie found her mental reflexes were too slow to be of much use.

  “Sorry, guys,” she apologized. “Jet lag just hit. My brain feels like Swiss cheese.”

  “Why don’t we turn in for the night?” Ellen suggested. “It’s been a long day.” She put the game back in its box, adding, “I’ve got a new Miss Marple mystery waiting for me, and I should call Ernie. That’s my husband,” she explained to Maggie. “He’s back in St. Paul. Our daughter, Stephanie, is looking in on him, so I shouldn’t worry. He’ll be fine. But I don’t think he can even open a can of soup if I’m not there to show him how.” She smiled fondly. “I think I’ll put my feet up and give Ernie a call before bed.”

  While Maggie was staying in her usual spot in the upstairs guest room, Ellen was sleeping in the small, rarely used office tucked behind the front parlor. Maggie had peeked in before dinner. In the short time she’d been there, Ellen had already transformed the tiny room with only a desk and daybed into a cozy little space, complete with a hand-knit afghan and a stack of mystery novels from the San Juan Island Library.

  Lena yawned, then declared, “I’m not a bit tired. Aunt Ellen, do you mind putting the children to bed? I’m going to make some peanut butter blossoms.”

  Ellen paused, eyeing Lena for a moment, and then nodded. “Of course. You go right ahead.”

  “Do you want help with the cookies?” Maggie asked Lena, secretly hoping she would say no. Her limbs were beginning to feel like they were made of lead, the emotional and physical toll of the last few days starting to overtake her.

  Lena waved her away. “Go rest,” she encouraged, shooing Maggie up the stairs. “We’ll see you in the morning. Sweet dreams.” She didn’t meet Maggie’s eyes.

  In the soft golden light of early evening, away from the lights of the house and across the wide expanse of lawn, Daniel Wolfe crouched beneath the fringe of Douglas firs ringing the property. He sat hidden in the same spot he’d occupied for the last two evenings, dark hair and clothes blending into the shadows between the branches. He saw the women and children at the table. A whiff of supper drifted out an open window—grilled salmon. It reminded him of home, of his grandmother making salmon almost every night when the Chinook were running and the fishing was good. He remembered unwrapping the little foil tent stuffed with the bright-orange salmon steak and a sprig of dill from her garden. Sometimes there was a slice of lemon on top, but lemons were a luxury, so it had been absent more often than not.

  His stomach growled, but he ignored it. He didn’t deserve the warmth and the comfort of that house, let alone a full belly. When he came out of that cold, black water, he made a promise to himself, and he intended to keep it.

  A new woman was at the table, tall and slender with a mass of dark, curly hair gathered at her neck. Daniel had not seen her arrive. She ate quickly and kept glancing toward the blonde wife. At one point, when the dinner was done, she rose and went to the bank of windows, staring across the lawn. He shrank back into his hiding spot, although muffled by the thick carpet of moss and needles, hidden as he was in the shadows, she would never hear or see him. She turned away after a moment. She looked tired.

  Who was she? She wore sadness like a jacket. Daniel could sense it wrapped around her. He knew that look. He had been wearing it in some way much of his life. He shifted, trying to find a comfortable position amid the roots and rocks. He was just a few years past thirty, fit and athletic, still a man firmly in his prime, but tonight he felt much older. He could feel every twig and stone beneath him.

  After dinner the children and two of the women went upstairs. Only the blonde wife was left. She absently mixed something in a bowl, moving as though in a dream, then placed a tray in the oven. A few minutes later he sniffed the air, catching a faint
scent wafting from an open window. Peanut butter cookies. Like Katherine used to make, long ago when they were first dating, when she was still a farm girl from Georgia, before the city transformed her.

  From the open window came snatches of music. Ella Fitzgerald, a crackly recording of a slow jazz song. It was growing dark, the shadows lengthening across the lawn. Daniel sighed, easing back against the rough trunk of a Coast Douglas fir tree and pulling his cargo jacket closer around him, settling himself in for the night. Even in summer the islands could be cold after sundown. He remembered that from when he was a boy, the chilly novelty of wearing wool socks to bed in August.

  He stayed as he had for the last two nights, waiting for hours until every light in the house went dark, until the stars came out like pinpricks in the sky, a wash of them across the silky darkness. He watched while the household slumbered, until the first pale streaks of gray crept through the early morning, until the birds stirred above him and began to twitter sleepily. He watched because there was no one else to watch over them now. He kept his vigil through the darkness until he heard the first trill of a lark from the meadow nearby, signaling the dawn. Only then did he rise, muscles stiff with cold, his stomach tight with hunger, and slip away through the trees. His job for the day was done.

  Chapter Four

  MAGGIE AWOKE, MOMENTARILY DISORIENTED IN A bright splash of midmorning sun. She rolled over, trying to get her bearings, and stared blankly out the window framed by cheerful red-checked curtains to the side yard and fringe of firs ringing the property. She suppressed a groan as the whole exhausting trip and strange, surreal evening came back to her in an instant.